When the first opener was called, everybody flopped down to the beach decked out head-to-toe in heavy rubber rain gear. You could pick out the old salts by how they wore it. The rookies looked awkward and nervous. The old pros, cool as a cucumber. A bulldozer chugged up the beach, hooked up to a skiff, and dragged it into the surf. When our number was called, I swallowed my heart, climbed on board, and Jim lowered the engine.

There were three of us on the skiff. Jim, my able-bodied skipper and good friend, was driving. Brian was a timid and sweet kid of twenty, fresh off the plane from Ohio. And me — six weeks in Alaska, which made me a veteran in Brian’s eyes.

Our six nets were coiled on the deck. Each one was 250 feet long with a line of floats along the top edge and a lead-line along the bottom. Jim broke down the process in no uncertain terms:

“We’re gonna pull up to the first can, bow into the tide. You’ve got two clips — one on the lead end of the net, one tied to the bow. Clip the lead end to the can. See that guide line running between the cans? That gets clipped to the bow. When it’s clipped up, give me the thumbs up and stand back. But be ready. You’ve gotta have the tail clip ready. I’m going to tear ass down the guide line and at the other end is a ring. When that ring comes over the edge, you nail it with the clip. I kill the engine when I get close so we don’t overrun it — so if you miss it, the tide’s got us and you just flagged a net.”

Flagging a net is the scourge of the greenhorn. You miss the ring, the rushing tide balloons the net and rips the tail end out of your hand. You have to circle around, collect the net, restack it, and try again. Every miss is time your nets aren’t in the water. Dollar bills swimming up the Inlet into your competition’s nets.

Jim held the tail clip out. And in a split second I made a decision.

I knew that if I didn’t take that clip out of his hand and attempt the first set with every fiber of confidence I could summon, I would pass the duty to Brian. Brian would get the experience, become the natural candidate, and I would avoid it the entire season — just like I’d avoided the lav hose back on the tarmac in Anchorage. In that split second I chased the chain of thought to its end and found the sustenance of my own cowardice.

I took the clip.

Jim untied us and looped around to hit it from scratch. Brian on the lead clip. Me with the bow clip and tail clip ready. We hit the first can. Brian got the lead clip on at the moment I snapped the bow clip onto the guide line. Thumbs up. Jim let the boat drop back for half a second and gunned it.

Brian fell back on his ass. I was braced against the gunwale, watching the guide line whiz through the carabiner so fast that the saltwater soaking the rope came off in a rooster tail — a rooster tail that flailed around but mostly shot right in my face. Sea greenery caught on the line sprayed in too. The can was closing fast.

The trip takes just long enough to feel the adrenaline sponging up your legs, your heart pounding like it hadn’t pounded since your deflowering ten years before, and then WHAM — the violent clang of metal on metal and the ring appeared over the gunwale. I threw myself at it, body extended, with the clip reaching as far toward that ring as I could, and somehow the levered mouth of the carabiner fell right onto it. The tide yanked us away before I could release my grip and the clip ripped from my hand.

The first net was set.

All summer I was the clip guy. Brian became my number two, backing up my moves, taking direction. I was still green. But when I set that first clip, I affected a different course for the rest of the season.

Hiking up from the beach after that first set, I was walking on air. Something I’d been terrified of had turned out to be the biggest thrill since the first day I pulled into Lugnano. It was the first time since Italy that I felt my soul stirred.

From my journal:

I survived my first day of fish and came out smiling. Laugh “Ha HA!” in the face of adversity, cloudiness, wet hands, achy back, heartbreak, diarrhea, exhaustion, hunger and ill-fitting clothes.